Deterioration mechanism of connectors used in long driven vehicles

It is an important issue to investigate the deterioration state of connectors used in long driven vehicles in order to develop vehicle connectors. There are a few reports that investigated the deterioration state of connectors used in long driven vehicles in detail. Therefore, the deterioration state of a connector collected from a vehicle (driven for 8 years, 100,000km mileage) was investigated through the terminal resistance, the observation of connector surface, and oxidized abrasion powder in this study. Moreover, we investigated temperature environment and vibration status in the actual vehicle environment to identify the main factor of the connector deterioration. From these results, the deterioration of connectors used in long driven vehicles was estimated to be mainly fretting wear caused by vibration. In addition, the fretting cycle of fretting corrosion test in laboratory equivalent to fretting in 8 years 100,000km mileage driven was figured out by comparing the radius of the oxidized abrasion powder in fretting corrosion test with in corrected terminals.